Menu
It doesn’t feel much like fall here today with a high of 86 degrees, but I know that one of these days I’ll look out the window and see colorful leaves on the trees outside of our school. It’s exciting to hear students come into the classroom, excited to share about the colorful leaves they saw that morning. Sometimes they’ll even bring in a leaf to share!
Teaching about leaves is so fun because they’re tangible. Students can find leaves, feel them, and even learn with them. There are so many possibilities for hands-on, tactile learning with leaves.
Here are five leaf activities that will bring the fun of fall into your classroom!
1. Sticky Leaf Activity
Have students bring in leaves from home or collect some outside at your school. Give each student a square of contact paper. Students will stick the leaves onto the contact paper, trying to fill in most of the spaces between the leaves. Stick another piece on the back. Then cut out a leaf shape – use a template if you’d like.
These look so cute on bulletin boards, on windows, taped to students’ lockers, or hanging from the ceiling (if you’re allowed to do that!).
2. Nature Sort
Go on a nature walk and collect leaves, acorns, and other fall items. Once you’re back at school, sort the items on a large sheet of butcher paper. How many different ways can you sort them? Listen to your students’ suggestions on ways to sort!
3. Read Leaf-themed Books
I have a roundup of my favorite leaf read alouds here!
4. Leaf Ten Frame Math Activity
This activity is a great example of how versatile morning tub activities can be!
I made this math center with the 1-10 leaf cards from my September morning tubs. I printed large ten frames and added leaves. Students will pick a leaf card, say the number, and show the number on the ten frame.
If you don’t have access to real leaves, mini erasers work too! Just use a smaller ten frame. Here are the leaf mini erasers I have.
If you’d like the ten frame templates for this math center, enter your info below and they’ll be sent to your inbox!
5. Do Leaf-themed Learning Activities
Adding leaf activities into your everyday learning activities is easy! I like adding thematic activities to morning tubs and centers. Here are a few ideas from my store:
Leaf Fine Motor Activities Pack – This includes 14 leaf-themed activities that work on a variety of fine motor skills, like tweezing and cutting.
Kindergarten Morning Tubs for September – Although this entire pack isn’t leaf-themed, there are several fall activities. I also pulled the leaf number cards from this pack to use with the ten frame activity above.
Kindergarten Morning Tubs for October – This pack has more fall activities, including these leaf count and clip cards.
Fall Count and Cover – These mats are perfect for working on number representation.
Add leaf erasers to games – I like to use mini erasers with non-thematic activities to make them more relevant to the themes or units I’m teaching. My Short A CVC Word Games, like this board game, are the perfect way to use these leaf mini erasers!
What are your favorite leaf activities?
Do you have other leaf activities that you love? I hope you enjoyed reading about some of my favorites. Please let me know if I can help with these or any other resources you need for your classroom. Be sure to follow me on Instagram (@kroltgen) and Facebook (Katie Roltgen Teaching) for more ideas and inspiration!
